1. Technical Field
The invention disclosed broadly relates to data processing and more particularly relates to the management of copying and printing operations for a softcopy document by a data processor, so as to comply with royalty payment requirements for making copies of the document.
2. Background Art
Modern word processing and text editing programs employ structured document architecture to provide greater control and flexibility in the displayed and printed appearance of documents prepared with the programs. Structured document architecture is described, for example, in the copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 344,332, filed Apr. 26, 1989, entitled "A Method for Manipulating Elements Within a Structured Document Using Active Intent Interpretation," by C. J. Bennett, D. A. Foulger, E. M. Hesse and D. W. Walsh, assigned to the IBM Corporation and incorporated herein by reference. A structured document can be prepared in accordance with the standardized general markup language, such as is described in the International Standard's Organization Standard 8879-1986. A data stream of text marked up in accordance with the standardized general markup language, will have its text divided into elements consisting of a begin tag and its content and terminated by an end tag, when necessary. Within a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, text is displayed to the user as it will appear when it is printed, even though its structure is defined by the begin tags and end tags for each element of text. Formatting of the elements within a structured document is done when the document is displayed to the user. Those elements which fall into the category of commonly used elements include paragraphs, simple lists, ordered lists, bulleted lists, and list items.
Large documents marked up with structured document architecture tags, can be manipulated as a softcopy book, by the method described in the copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 486,461, filed February 28, 1990, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,146,552, entitled "Method for Associating Annotation With Electronically Published Material" by J. P. DeVries, J. J. Slater, M. E. Moran, J. Unger and E. Cassorla, assigned to the IBM Corporation and incorporated herein by reference. The Cassorla, et al. patent describes a method for creating on-line softcopy books from the same marked up source material used to create printed information such as a word processor or a markup language source used with a text formatter. A book data stream is provided, in an intermediate format for storing on-line information, specifically designed to be used by a book display program. The data stream captures and preserves structural information about the books, by using the structured document tags. The method is suited to display on-line softcopy books in a useable manner on a variety of display devices. A book display program manipulates the book data stream and allows users to interact with the on-line information. The electronic book may be used like a hard copy book, except that it is displayed on a display screen. The method allows readers to treat on-line softcopy books as if they were hard copy books, and uses the book data stream as its input.
The book data stream is created by a special softcopy book building program which processes the marked source material by performing a word frequency analysis to form compact data tokens which represent the words in the book. The compacted, tokenized text is then stored as the book data stream on a storage disk such as a compact optical disk. To read the book data stream from the storage disk, a special softcopy book reading program, reconverts the compacted, tokenized text into the marked source material, which is then capable of being displayed on a display device, copied as an ASCII file onto other storage disks, printed on a hardcopy printer or transmitted over a modem to other data processors. The process for converting the marked source material to the book data stream is described in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,426 by R. G. Carlgren and W. D. Modlin, entitled "Method for Use of Morphological Information to Cross Reference Keywords Used for Information Retrieval", assigned to the IBM Corporation and incorporated herein by reference.
The special softcopy book reading program has been embodied in the IBM BookManager (TM) READ program, which helps the user manage, search and look at on-line books. There are two complementary BookManager products, BookManager BUILE is the special softcopy book building program, which creates on-line books from files marked-up with Generalized Markup Language. The BookManager READ product can then manage, search and show the on-line books created by BookManager BUILD. The BookManager READ program product is described in the IBM publication "BookManager (TM) READ, Displaying On-Line Books," publication number SC23-0449-0, February 1989. The BookManager BUILD program product is described in the IBM publication "BookManager (TM) BUILD -Preparing On-Line Books," publication number SC23-0450-0, February 1989. These publications are available from IBM branch offices.
The BookManager BUILD and BookManager READ program products use on-line, softcopy books which are formatted using the Generalized Markup Language (GML) described in the following two IBM publications: "IBM BookMaster--Text Programmers Notebook--Release 3.0," publication number SC34-5012-02, September 1990 and "IBM BookMaster--Users Guide --Release 3.0," publication number SC34-5009-03, September 1990. Both of these IBM BookMaster publications are available through IBM branch offices.
Softcopy books are frequently communicated, stored, displayed and modified in their softcopy form, with hard copies only occasionally made. Authors of such electronic books or documents frequently desire to impose appropriate forms of security treatment for the electronic books so generated and they wish to have any rights of authorship in their works, respected. This is provided by the invention described in the copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 546,334, filed Jun. 29, 1990, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,428,529, entitled "Structured Document Tags Invoking Specialized Functions" by T. V. Hartrick, P. E. Higgins and N. J. Sabia, assigned to the IBM Corporation and incorporated herein by reference. The Hartrick, et al. patent application describes a means to enforce the author's intentions for the treatment of his electronic books or documents. The author may place a copyright notice on his softcopy documents, and the mechanism increases the prominence of that notice. Security labels such as "Company Confidential," "Do Not Copy," or "Do Not Distribute," which the author may place on the softcopy of the document, are enforced by limiting or preventing copying.
The invention disclosed by Hartrick, et al. is employed to place a special copyright notice on the first page of the displayed document as it is displayed on the display device. A special structured document tag for copyright which accompanies the copyright notice character string can be located anywhere in the structured document's formatted text stream. This is referred to as a global tag. If a printer is connected to the system and commanded to print the document, a cover page can be selectively printed which includes the copyright notice, before the rest of the structured document is printed by the printer.
Another feature disclosed by Hartrick, et al. is placement of a special "Do Not Copy" label on pages of the document as it is displayed. A special structured document tag accompanies the "Do Not Copy" label in the structured document. Its presence will cause the "Do Not Copy" string, to be selectively displayed on all pages when the document is displayed on the display device. Still further, if a printer connected to the system is commanded to print the document, the printing operation will be aborted in response to the presence of the special structured document tag for the "Do Not Copy" label. Still further, if a disk drive storage device is connected to the system, a write to disk command for the document will be aborted in response to the special structured document tag for the "Do Not Copy" label. Still further, if a communications adapter is connected to the system, a transmission command for the document will have its function aborted in response to the special structured document tag for the "Do Not Copy" label.
Authors, of course, are in the business of authoring to make money. And this motivation is not different for those authors and their publishers who have chosen the medium of softcopy books for their publications. What is needed is a means to enforce the payment of royalties to publishers and authors of softcopy books, when a reader desires to make a copy of a portion or all of the book.